In the evening a telegram came from Anna Iurievna; she informed her father that she would be with him on the following day, at five in the afternoon.

“Shall I be able to hold out?  Shall I last so long?” sighed the sick man, all day long.  And the more he was disturbed in mind, the more threatening were his attacks of pain.  He passed a bad night.  Toward morning a violent attack, much worse than any that had gone before, almost carried him away.  He could hardly breathe, owing to the sharp suffering.  Hot baths for his hands and steam inhalations no longer had any beneficial effect, though they had alleviated his pain hitherto.

The doctor, the Sister of Mercy, and the servant wore themselves out.  But still, as before, his wife alone was not admitted to him.  She raged with anger, trying, and not without success, to convince everyone that she was going mad with despair.  Little Olga had been taken away on the previous day by a friend of the general’s, to stay there “during this terrible time.”  That night Madame Nazimoff did not go to bed at all; and, as befitted a devoted wife, did not quit her husband’s door.  When the violent attack just before dawn quieted down, she made an attempt to go in to him; but no sooner did the sick man see her at the head of his couch, on which he had at last been persuaded to lie, than strong displeasure was expressed in his face, and, no longer able to speak, he made an angry motion of his hand toward her, and groaned heavily.  The Sister of Mercy with great firmness asked the general’s wife not to trouble the sick man with her presence.

“And I am to put up with this.  I am to submit to all this?” thought Olga Vseslavovna, writhing with wrath.  “To endure all this from him, and after his death to suffer beggary?  No, a thousand times no!  Better death than penury and such insults.”  And she fell into gloomy thought.

That gesture of displeasure at the sight of his wife was the last conscious act of Iuri Pavlovitch Nazimoff.  At eight in the morning he lost consciousness, in the midst of violent suffering, which lasted until the end.  By the early afternoon he was no more.

During the last hour of his agony his wife knelt beside his couch without let or hindrance, and wept inconsolably.  The formidable aristocrat and millionaire was dead.

Everything went on along the usual lines.  The customary stir and unceremonious bustle, instead of cautious whispering, rose around the dead body, in preparation for a fashionable funeral.  No near relatives were present except his wife, and she was confined to her room, half-fainting, half-hysterical.  All responsibility fell on the humble doctor, and he busied himself indefatigably, conscientiously, in the sweat of his brow, making every effort to omit nothing.  But, as always happens, he omitted the most important thing of all.  The early twilight was already descending on St. Petersburg, shrouded in chilly mist, when Edouard Vicentevitch Polesski